As I will admit, it is common practice to return a broken phone once it's replaced by the insurance or the cell carrier. I'm prefacing this with that statement. However, here's my story - so far:
I am a Verizon Wireless customer, and have been a Verizon Wireless customer with my own account (be it with a cosigner or on my own) for more than seven years now. My credit isn't the greatest, and I've missed payments here and there, but even after my girlfriend ran up an extra $750 on my bill one month, I've always managed to bring my account current within a couple of months. I might not have been the perfect customer, but they've nonetheless always gotten their money from me, and I've definitely been loyal to them, in a city where even Boost Mobile has great reception.
Fuck that. It's over. As of tomorrow afternoon - it would have been today if I had gone with the iPhone - I will be with T-Mobile. And here's why.
In October, my Blackberry (Curve 8330) started crapping out on me. To be honest, I don't remember the exact issue; I believe it had something to do with randomly restarting itself. I took the phone into Verizon to see if their tech guys could fix it, figuring it was probably a loose connection of some sort. Not surprisingly - this has happened every time I've had a tech problem - they couldn't fix it, and chose to replace the phone instead. It wasn't through the insurance, it was just a refurbished phone they were sending me, for free, so I was okay with it. The woman in the store put the order in, I went home with my piece of shit phone, and a few days later, I received the refurbished phone and activated it.
I don't ever remember her telling me I needed to mail the broken phone back, and I don't remember there being any instructions to do so in the package with the new phone either. Is it possible I missed them? Yes, of course. Is it probable? Honestly, no. I put the broken phone in my desk drawer, and while I can be forgetful and irresponsible, I feel like I would have noticed something like an instruction to mail a phone back or incur a $420 fee for keeping it. So, I maintain that I was never told.
Regardless, the policy is apparently that one has ninety days to return the malfunctioning cell phone, and after that period of time, the customer is charged the full retail value of the phone. In this case, the full retail value of the phone is $420, which is fucking amazing to me considering that for that price, I could hook up a broadband card to my netbook, install some software, and have a much better and far more powerful "cell phone". But that's neither here nor there; when I received my bill in December, there was a past due balance of $420 on it. Considering I've been paying my bill on time for the last year or so - fiscal responsibility is kind of my new thing - I was rather upset about this. But I calmly - seriously, I did - called customer service and spoke with a representative regarding the issue. Since there was ambiguity regarding my instructions on the old phone, I was told by two different people that I'd be allowed to mail the phone back to them, and once received, they would remove the charge from my bill.
I was in Lake Placid at the time, but as soon as I returned and received the FedEx billable stamp they specifically sent me in order to mail the phone back (and track the package), I sent it out. As per their instructions, I then called them with the tracking number. Their warehouse called about it, and I told them it was on the way. I received a call from billing a few days later, telling me my service was going to be cut off if I didn't pay the past due amount of $420; so I called and spoke with both customer service and accounts once again. At this point, FedEx's website had the package listed as having made it, and even showed who signed for it. I told them the package was received, there was no reason to cut off my service. I was told that there was a notation on the account that I had been told that, but they hadn't received word from the warehouse yet regarding the matter, and they needed to just get paperwork from then confirming it; in the meantime, they could hold billing off for another five days or so.
I discovered during that phone call that there is no interdepartmental collusion whatsoever: nobody knows what's going on in any other department, even regarding the same issue that they need to collaborate on. Given my conversation with them today, I wonder if they set up the corporation this way on purpose, to give themselves tons of bureaucratic leeway in getting their way regarding disputes. However, at that point, I had spoken with no less than five people regarding the matter, all of whom reiterated in some form that once the phone was received by their warehouse, the charge would be removed from my account.
This morning, I received another phone call from Verizon's billing, informing me once again that I have until tomorrow to pay my past due balance of $420, or my service would be terminated. This kind of surprised me, since we were definitely past the five days of grace I was told I'd be given, I guess I assumed the matter had been lain to rest, finally. But, I had also been told at one point that it might take a couple months for my bill to reflect that, so I figured I'd probably just have to call them again, as frustrating as it is that I have to even do so, and it'd be taken care of.
After once again giving the confirmation of delivery of the package and explaining the situation, the woman on the phone reviewed the account, and told me yes, they received the phone, and yes, she could see that I had been told that the charge would be removed from my account. She didn't dispute any of that. But, she had a lovely surprise for me: all bullshit. According to her, it doesn't matter what I was told by the multiple people before her, there is no way they can remove the charge from my account after the ninety day grace period. I fucking blew up. There was a lot of yelling. I said fine, then I want the phone back. Apparently, they can't do that, either: once the phone is received in the warehouse, they can't send it back to me. So I reiterated that I want the charge removed. She could offer me a $35 credit to make up for the bad information, then send me over to financial services in order to set up a payment plan for the $420 that would have to be repaid.
In other words, when the phone was still in my possession, they told me to mail it back and the situation would be rectified. Once they had the phone back, they decided they couldn't do anything about it, anything besides both keep the phone, as well as charge me a shitload of money for being in possession of the phone. The phone that is now in their possession.
This is fucking illegal, but Verizon is trying to get away with doing it. On my end, currently, I'm terminating my own damned contract and refusing to pay a dime of this. I don't care if the phone is broken, if I have to pay for keeping the phone, I at least want the phone in my possession. It can be a paperweight or something, a nice $420 paperweight. The centerpiece of an electronic garden. I can repurpose it, use it for tethering, something. I can just fucking have it, since last time I checked, if you pay for merchandise, at the very least you should be allowed to have that merchandise. Contractually speaking, cell phone contracts are fucking bullshit, and apparently it's one of the first things you learn in Contracts these days as a 1L. But not only does it cost more to fight something like this than just cough up the money, but these corporations have vast sums of money that they're inexplicably willing to spend fighting your broke ass in court over a few hundred dollars.
So there it is, there's Verizon. Is T-Mobile any better as a company? Who knows, but I do know that Verizon has no problem trying to rape me, so fuck them. As it stands, I have no intention of paying either the $420 for the phone, or the early termination fee I'm certain this will incur. Love to see where this takes me.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
0 comments:
Post a Comment